The best fictional detectives who were contemporaries of Sherlock Holmes

If you’re a fan of Conan Doyle‘s Sherlock Holmes stories, or the BBC TV series Sherlock, you may well be looking for other great detectives from the golden era of the detective short story to discover and enjoy. Here’s our list of ten of the greatest fictional detectives who solved mysteries and brought criminals to justice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the same time as Conan Doyle’s sleuth was lodging at 221B Baker Street. We are indebted to David Stuart Davies’ excellent introduction to Shadows of Sherlock Holmes (Wordsworth Classics) for some of the following information about these authors and detectives, many of whose names have long since fallen into obscurity. We’ve also added a few suggestions of our own. Davies’ collection is a great compendium of these forgotten gems, including some of the best stories…